Verne Lundquist: 50 years of sports broadcasting, memories

Verne Lundquist, right, with President Obama has seen a lot in 50 years of broadcasting. (Getty)

In your life, have you ever seen anything like this?

- Jack Nicklaus on the 17th green at Augusta in 1986.

- Tiger Woods at the 16th at Augusta in 2005.

- Christian Laettner at the buzzer in 1992.

- Jackie Smith in the Orange Bowl end zone in Super Bowl XIII.

- Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan in Lillehammer in 1994.

Of course you have. And as you saw each of these moments, you heard about them from Verne Lundquist, who Saturday celebrates his 50th anniversary in broadcasting.

“August 31st, 1963,” Lundquist said this week. “It’s stunning to me.”

For longtime viewers, it’s hard to believe that Lundquist, 73, has now spent more time on network television than he did on local TV as a mainstay on WFAA (Channel 8) in Dallas and as the longtime radio voice of the Dallas Cowboys before stints on ABC and CBS, most recently as the latter network’s voice of Southeastern Conference football.

He’s called 20 sports over the years, ranging from archery to equestrian to track and field to bowling, and it’s a source of constant amazement that the guy who is known primarily in Texas for his football work had his biggest national audience for figure skating – 126.6 million viewers for Tonya vs. Nancy at the 1994 Winter Olympics.

Lundquist grew up in Austin living next door to Texas and Texas A&M coaching legend D.X. Bible. After graduating from Texas Lutheran, he attended a year of seminary before deciding he wanted to try broadcasting and was hired for a weekend sports job on KTBC-TV in Austin.

He applied unsuccessfully for a job at WFAA in 1964 and worked for a year at WOAI in San Antonio before getting a second shot in Dallas in September 1967. That led to a long, successful stint on Dallas TV and a 12-year run on the Cowboys radio network, which led to network opportunities at ABC and, beginning in 1982, at CBS.

His NFL partners at CBS included Terry Broadshaw, Pat Haden, Dick Vermeil and Dan Fouts. When CBS lost the NFL after the 1993 season, Lundquist took a pay cut to stay at CBS doing golf, figure skating and other events and worked Sunday night NFL games on TBS.

Lundquist returned to CBS when the NFL returned to the network that year, but after two years he was taken off the NFL and assigned to college football.

“I was not given an option,” he said. “Now, I would not go back. I’m not a BCS guy, but the initiation of the BCS made every college football game relevant. Happily for us, the SEC proved itself to be the dominant conference, so we took what was thought to be a regional sport and gave it a national telecast each Saturday.

“The passion that you feel in that conference is something I will never forget. I don’t want to go back. I think Gary (Danielson) and Tracy (Wolfson) and I have established a community with our SEC telecasts. I want to do them as long as my brain works, and now that I’ve got two brand new knees (one surgery last year, the second in May) I can walk and talk.”

Lundquist has had among his sport’s most memorable moments in football (his comment that Smith, after dropping a touchdown pass, “has to be the sickest man in America”), basketball (the 1992 Kentucky-Duke game decided by Laettner’s shot), figure skating and golf (including Woods’ circular chip in 2005 that drew the comment, “In your life have you seen anything like that?”).

He will be honored Sept. 11 at the Headliner’s Club in Austin and will return to Houston this winter for his annual fund-raiser benefiting Texas Lutheran.

Not bad for a former ministerial student who, early in his career, wasn’t give much chance for success.

“When I lost the job in Dallas and wanted to spread my wings by going to San Antonio, I told J.C. Kellam (the longtime KTBC president and confidant of President Lyndon B. Johnson) that I was leaving and he said, ‘Just as well. I don’t know if there’s much future for a four-eyed sportscaster.’” Lundquist said.

“He was trying to be funny. He wasn’t being hurtful. He was being comical. But I remembered it.”